Bricolaje: Spain's Independent Rock

Mujeres are facing it all. It's 1:15 a.m. on the final night of the San Miguel Primavera Sound festival, and the band is playing to a massive, ecstatic crowd, beyond which lies the Mediterranean Sea, the night sky. The front row is unbridled chaos. Kids are bent-over-barricade stoked, screaming the words, throwing fingers and fists, jumping atop one another. They're responding like it's a long-awaited reunion show rather than a set from one of the Barcelona DIY scene's most popular recent groups.

This all makes me a bit embarrassed by the fact that I had little idea of who Mujeres were until interviewing them the day prior. But after giving their recent record Soft Gems a spin, I'm unsurprised to learn about their affinity for classic, uptempo pop from the 1950s and 60s and their acute interest in the current San Francisco garage rock scene. "Thee Oh Sees are the band," guitarist Martí Gallén tells me, "For us, there is no other band." Mujeres are most concerned with the energy of their music, creating moments with audiences that are breathing and physical. "When we started, the scene in Barcelona was dead and nobody was moving at shows," says Gallén. "People were going into concerts and standing with their hands crossed, but music is not that."

With Primavera's lengthy roster of acts from around the world, many attendees from abroad go through the festival without ever seeing any of the 68 Spanish acts on the bill. That list included a number of artists I'd heard before, like electronic producer John Talabot, but who were the rest? Primavera could not make it easier to find out. Walking through Parc del Fòrum, you're immediately presented with several mini-stages dominated by tiny Spanish bands, as well as a series of booths inhabited by local labels and shops.

There is a sense of allegiance and admiration towards Primavera among DIY-oriented Spanish bands, a love you'd never feel coming from bands of similar stature at a major U.S. festival. And that is largely because Primavera has remained dedicated to the quality of its artists-- "music for its value, not as a product," says Mujeres frontman Yago Alcover-- and to supporting young, local talent. Mujeres describe concrete ways the festival benefitted the band, as well as "spiritual" pros: performing there in years past made them believe in themselves.

Many of the young artists I discovered spoke of a new energy that characterizes independent music in Barcelona. Still, others mentioned the increasing number of shops, bands, and labels disbanding due to the country's increasingly dire economic crisis, which has already left one in four Spaniards unemployed.

Watch the video for Mujeres' "Soft Gems PT1":

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The story of Mujeres' ascent sounds familiar in the States. "At the beginning there was hometown hype," Gallén says, due largely to the fact that there were no interesting garage bands in Spain around 2008. So their third concert ever was in a Barcelona venue that holds 4,000 people, opening for the Stranglers, and even then there was interest from their label, Sones, who has a distribution deal with Warner Bros. "The label was saying, we want your record now. And we said, 'No, stop, we haven't got any songs [laughs] and we haven't got the album.'"

For a band with a legitimate fan base, major-label distribution, and international touring experience, what strikes me about Mujeres is that in America they'd exist sustainably within indie rock's middle class. But, although bassist Pol Rodellar does own the beloved shop Luchador Records, which doubles as a DIY show space, no one is making a living off Mujeres.

"There's never been a middle class when we talk about labels," says Jordi Llansamà, the founder and director of BCore Disc, a 22-year-old one-time Spanish hardcore label that is often described to me as the country's Dischord. "There's small labels or big, multinational ones. The big ones are suffering. But small labels have always known how to look after themselves."

Launched in 1990, BCore was inspired by bands like Minor Threat, Negative Approach, and Bad Brains, not to mention Barcelona hardcore groups like Subterranean Kids, L'Odi Social, and GRB. It was only in later years that BCore expanded to an all-encompassing sound-- pop, garage, post-rock, emo-- releasing about 10 records a year. But Llansamà says most of the groups on the label come from punk backgrounds, regardless of their current genre; Delorean, who gained international notice for their breezy 2010 dance-pop album Subiza, released electronic music on BCore but previously played in the hardcore band Sword of Damocles.

Llansamà says the late-80s punk scene in Barcelona was precarious and invisible. Most concerts took place at rehearsal spaces or squats before the small, current circuit of venues and bars was established. "Hardly anyone came to Spain," Llansamà says. "When bands went on tours, you had to go to Germany or Holland." It took time for Barcelona to get on the map, but eventually BCore booked the first European tours for bands like Bad Religion and Youth of Today. "The scene was completely underground," he continues, "but it worked, and that spirit came to stay in our label." Of the many upstart micro-labels at Primavera, the two that seem most in keeping with this tradition are La Castanya and Famèlic.

I was introduced to La Castanya co-founder Joan Guàrdia, 31, over the internet via Ted Leo, who is signed to the label in Spain. Guàrdia, a graphic designer, founded the label with his brothers in 2008 after years of booking shows for such artists as Girls Against Boys and Mary Timony. "[A label] can seem harder when you think about the United States," Guàrdia says, talking quickly with wide-eyed enthusiasm. "But after 10 years of bands touring around here, you going there, they sleeping at your house, you go there and sleep at theirs, you build a web of friends. And then you end up hooking up with Ted Leo."

In America, there is often talk of fabled, European grants for arts and culture projects, and in Spain the most helpful are travel grant programs that can fund trips to SXSW or Canadian Music Week. But as governmental funding is cut in all areas, no one I speak with in Barcelona is reliant on this kind of money in a significant way. "The DIY scene doesn't wait for public funds to make things happen," Guàrdia says. "Government grants are not what brought many people to start little labels. I didn't even know they existed."

The label I'm most often recommended in Barcelona is Famèlic, active since just the end of last year, and run in part by the melodic, angular, and hyperactive punk band Furguson, who are also signed to La Castanya. Like BCore before them, Famèlic was inspired by the spirit of the hardcore scene in their native Vic (45 minutes outside of Barcelona) where the label's founders, now in their early 20s, have booked shows since they were 16. When I visit their booth at Primavera, the table is lined with vinyl, homemade CD-Rs, fanzines, and recycled-looking cassettes for bands called Mates Mates, L'Hereu Escampa, and Regalim-- what co-founder Edu Vila tells me is a mix of folk, pop, emo, electronic, and more. "Spain is a little country and it's hard to find receptive people with no mainstream music," Vila says. "But it's rewarding if you love what you do."

A scrawny dude in huge, wiry glasses also tells me about the label's event in Vic, called Festival Hoteler, which is located at a friend's hotel and unofficially coincides with a music conference, Mercat de la Música Viva de Vic. But Festival Hoteler is "more fun and more pure," according to Vila. "No stage, 30 groups during three days, a few resources, and a lot of crazy feelings."

Watch the video for Beach Beach's "Plants":

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You might not expect a band called Beach Beach, of La Castanya, to offer a mid-interview nod at McCarthy, the obscure Marxist indie pop group from 1980s Britain that would evolve into Stereolab. But it turns out that one of Beach Beach's more compelling qualities is their interest in mixing pop and politics to "protest in a beautiful way"-- as on "Easier", a cut from their recent debut album Tasteless Peace, about the political climate of their native Mallorca. The band's core songwriting duo is Pau Riutort, 25, and Tomeu Mulet, 22, who carries a Wavves tote.

Beach Beach aim for "a mix of New Wave from the 80s and indie rock from the early 90s," citing My Bloody Valentine's early albums and EPs as inspirations. They sing in English and say it's intuitive given that their influences are "99% English," but Riutort notes that there have been more bands singing in Spanish in recent years. "Right now, there's sometimes talk of a sense of belonging," he says, "that you have to sing in your language."

On the more artful, pop side of the spectrum at Primavera Sound came a pair of Spanish-sung bands from the two-year-old label El Genio Equivocado, the Madrid psych-pop group Cosmen Adelaida and a C86-indebted Barcelona band called Odio París. I begin the final day of the festival watching Odio París perform on the top of a double-decker bus just outside the gates. They play to a thin but receptive audience, many of whom seem to know the words. The band sings in Spanish but wears their British and American shoegaze influences prominently, like a Spanish-language Pains of Being Pure at Heart, but with more deliberate, ear-bleeding noise. This combination, well-documented on the band's self-titled 2011 debut, follows in the tradition of 90s Spanish bands like El Inquilino Comunista, inspired by Slowdive, Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine (whom they covered at Primavera).

And guitarist/vocalist Òscar Ferré says Odio París are "a little bit influenced by the new bands from New York," referring often to Captured Tracks and the New York noise-pop scene from three years back: "The new lo-fi in New York started the beginning of a world movement." One of Odio París' labelmates, Aias, released a record with Captured Tracks in 2010, and Óscar compares their own label to Captured Tracks in both sound and philosophy-- "young bands with a first album."

Along with Cosmen Adelaida and labelmates Grushenka, Ferré believes Odio París have coined "the new Spanish sound." Javier Egea, the singer and guitarist for Cosmen Adelaida, echoes this. "People are starting to not just imitate music from England and the States," he says, "but go further and develop a singular Spanish indie style." His band's music is less twee than Odio París, nodding more towards the atmosphere of Yo La Tengo; unsurprisingly Egea tells me he was most excited to see Real Estate at Primavera. The band is also influenced by Manchester post-punk, traditional Spanish folk, and Los Planetas, the best-known 90s indie rock band from Spain.

Watch the video for Cosmen Adelaida's "Alcobendas":

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Egea explains the differences between music in various regions of his country. In the South, he says, there's an Andalusian indie centered on sounds from the 80s and 90s, a combination of "flamenco with the Jesus and Mary Chain," he says, or "the Cure with Sevillanas," a classic Spanish folk style. But it's different in Madrid, rooted in the tradition of La Movida, an artistic response to repression following the death of Spain's fascist dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. (Egea recommends artists from this time such as Decima Víctima, Golpes Bajor, and La Mode.) "And so here we developed that special Madrilenian punk style that is an influence still," he says. "In Madrid, we talk about The New Movida. I think it's coming back." Egea points to the pop group Rusos Blancos, who have a song about the economy, as do the garage punk band Las Claveles. "Many people are writing songs about crisis now," he says. "There is a feeling of anxiety around that must affect the music itself."

When I ask if there are any bands in America to whom they feel a connection, they look puzzled. "We are ourselves," says Sergio Pérez García, the band's second half, who works as an engineer and producer for acts like Les Aus, El Guincho, Los Claveles, and more. And perhaps it's that mode of thinking that makes their music stand out. Despite the sonic distance between Pegasvs and much of the rest of the Barcelona DIY scene, everyone is friends, and they often play shows with bands of dissimilar styles. Later, I find the duo hanging out at La Castanya's booth.

Pegasvs also offer a recommendation: Fasenuova, a dark, industrial group from the North who have been active since the 90s and also played Primavera. "We're always outsiders, in our town and in Spain," the band's Ernesto Avelino says. "It's not a problem." When I ask the band about the most interesting things going on in Spain, in search of more music tips, their response feels apt: "The riots in the streets."